Perhaps its not a good thing for conference programmers to reveal their favourite speakers and sessions, but James Bridle's Where The Robots Work was my personal highlight from our programme at FutureEverything 2011.

James' keynote explored how cities were reorienting themselves around our emerging information infrastructure, notably how the built environment was now as much designed for machine habitation as it is for human occupation.

One of the session's more fascinating anecdotes illustrated how the price of real estate in Manhattan is dramatically affected by proximity to supernodes of connectivity; proximity that can shave fractions of seconds from Wall Street trades.

60 Hudson Street's art deco motifs underline its role as a communications hub that originates prior to the era of copper lines and early telephony. Its physical architecture is fitting, given its centrality in civilisation past and present.

However, it's somewhat strange that 60 Hudson Street's modern equivalents are so innocuous and prosaic. Given how crucial these facilities are to humanity, shouldn't we beatify and exalt them with the very best in modern architectural practice; aren't they the modern temples of our civilisation?

Though there are pragmatic reasons to avoid drawing attention to these facilities, perhaps their elevation to templehood would put them beyond humanity's destructive impulses. Indeed, could future generations venerate the temples of machine gods as did the surviving humans of Beneath the Planet of the Apes and their veneration of atomic weapons.

Perhaps we wish our machines to remain anonymous and mundane, not only to confine their magic to the Elysian cloud, but also to remind ourselves that humanity remains in charge and they inhabit prisons of our making.

Last September, at a meeting of the National Media Museum's Internet Gallery advisory board, Drew Hemment asked me to develop the 2011 conference programme for FutureEverything.

I played hard to get, but in honesty, I was flattered that Drew appreciated my work. Just last week we finalised this year's programme, a programme that without Greg Povey's immense intellect and Kevin Moore's tireless tenacity, just could not have come together.

Kevin asked me to reflect on my experience with FutureEverything for the festival catalogue, so I thought I'd have a little fun with my introduction…

He keeps sending us into the past.

2122? 2047?

I don’t even know when it is anymore…

All we know are the rules; we can’t go further back then the day we’re born, or forwards, past the day we’re destined to die.

He found that the very fabric of space-time itself appeared to store information about every event that had ever occurred in the past.

We use this knowledge to find the prophets – the ones whose ideas upon which the world turns.

He sends others back to shadow them and understand the impact of their works right up to the end of their lives. My job is to travel further back, intervene early and influence them to share what they know at the point they can have the greatest impact.

He tells me to gather together the strongest, but only during the temporal shifts of Springtime and only near the place he calls Mamucium.

We can’t tell them why. Once an individual space-time pathway has been used, we can’t use it again.

So, that springtime synod of prophecy has to change their present, steering it away from the terrible future from which we come, saving humanity from fates unimagined.

Thing is, travelling back through time can unhinge a guy, even if it is to save the world.

We don’t last long in this job – most end their days in the temporal asylums, skipping and skittering through time, hooked to an outboard hippocampus.

But while we can export the future to fix the present, we’ll serve Him and You.

Imran Ali (Conference Director, 2011)

My experience over the last six months has stretched me to breaking point - temporally, physically and intellectually - but I've been sustained by knowing that the FUTR team is one of the most idealistic, ambitious and fun bunch of people I've had the privilege to work with.